Fox's straight news coverage of impeachment is just recycled GOP talking points

Since the day Democrats began their opening arguments in the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, “straight news” programming on Fox has been laundering Republican talking points in covering it. During both special coverage of impeachment as well as regularly scheduled programming, Fox News personalities have been attacking the credibility of House impeachment managers, defending the president’s request for the Ukrainian government to investigate his political rival Joe Biden, downplaying witness testimonies in the House, dismissing the trial as “boring,” and reporting on a single anonymous source who claimed Trump “was not really being serious” when he talked about firing former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

In addition to presenting a deluge of GOP spin as “straight news,” Fox is not giving equal amounts of coverage to the different sides of the trial. Media Matters previously reported that Fox aired more live coverage of Trump’s defense team presenting its case in one night than it showed of all three nights of the House managers’ arguments combined. Together, these tactics of spinning or ignoring facts about the impeachment trial that are unfavorable to the president add up to “straight news” coverage that is intentionally misleading.

TALKING POINT: Impeachment is partisan and therefore illegitimate

Fox anchor Martha MacCallum claimed that “there was no outside voice” other than Schiff in the investigation of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president, despite public congressional hearings with nonpartisan experts and more than a dozen depositions of witnesses taken by members of the House Intelligence Committee leading up to the Senate trial.

From the January 22, 2020, edition of Fox News' impeachment coverage

MARTHA MACCALLUM (FOX NEWS ANCHOR): Dana, I'm struck by looking at the beginning of this process and the fact that when you go back to the Clinton impeachment, you had Ken Starr -- who we’re actually going to see as part of this process again here in the coming days -- but Adam Schiff was the independent prosecutor. He was -- there was no outside voice. There was no outside investigation like you had in the Mueller report where then there was the question of whether or not the supposedly impartial people outside the process ever actually found a crime. So that, by its very nature, created a partisan process here that has really never been shaken from this process.

DANA PERINO (FOX NEWS ANCHOR): That’s a great point.

TALKING POINT: Regular people don’t care about impeachment and Democrats only want “revenge”

As they waited for the commencement of the House impeachment managers’ arguments in the Senate, Townhall editor and Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich characterized voters’ reaction to the issue as one of indifference and said the impeachment process was not something “they talk about at the kitchen table.” Pavlich also vilified Democrats, claiming their support for impeachment is based on “revenge for the Mueller investigation not getting the results they wanted in terms of taking down President Trump.”

From the January 22, 2020, edition of Fox News' impeachment coverage

KATIE PAVLICH (TOWNHALL EDITOR): I would say this goes both ways. A lot of people say that this will be a blip on the radar when it comes to what people are worried about. The argument has been that impeachment is not on the top of the minds of American voters. They care about other issues that actually impact their bottom line in their homes, things they talk about at the kitchen table.

But on the other hand, this has been a very politicized, hot political issue. President Trump’s base will remember the way that House Democrats treated him, the way that Senate Democrats treated him. They remember how [Supreme Court Justice] Brett Kavanaugh was treated. And the left will remember and be impacted by how this plays out as well. You can argue the impeachment process, which maybe could have been an oversight committee issue in the House before they jumped straight to impeachment, was revenge for the Mueller investigation not getting the results they wanted in terms of taking down President Trump.

And when it comes to how we move forward here, you know, you had [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer this morning saying that there's a glaring need for evidence which really is an indictment of the House's case and not providing enough. Then you have [House Intelligence Committee Chairman] Adam Schiff saying he wants the opportunity to present his case. But you can argue that [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell has allowed him to do that by entering the House record in this resolution that was passed last night. So we will see where we go from there, but I think that there will be more people than not remembering what is happening in the next couple hours.

TALKING POINT: There was no quid pro quo

During a January 23 panel, anchor Shannon Bream repeated GOP talking points when discussing the impeachment trial, defending Trump for not going to the Department of Justice or FBI if he was concerned about corruption. She also went so far as to say there was no nefarious quid pro quo arrangement because when the president asked Ukraine for an investigation into the Bidens, he did not explicitly say it was “to hurt my political opponent.”

From the January 23, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream

RICHARD GOODSTEIN (DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST): If he wanted an actual investigation of the Bidens, wouldn’t he turn to the Department of Justice and the FBI, not to a country that he says is corrupt?

SHANNON BREAM (ANCHOR): Richard, I’m not sure that he trusts them.

…

BREAM: Do you not think that various administrations, Republican and Democrat, have in many, many cases, tied strings to money -- the billions in foreign aid that we send around the world. Do you not think that’s happened in other administrations?

GOODSTEIN: Of course, but I don’t think we have any evidence that any president before this has gone to a foreign leader to say, “Announce an investigation to hurt my political opponent.”

BREAM: He didn’t say “to hurt my political opponent.”

GOODSTEIN: Shannon, please.

…

BREAM: A lot of this was hearsay and a number of those witnesses had things to say that were actually good for the president. But we don’t hear Democrats talking about that.

TALKING POINT: Trump “was not really being serious” about firing former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch

On the January 24 edition of Fox News’ Bill Hemmer Reports, chief White House correspondent John Roberts said his source told him Trump “was not really being serious” when he talked about firing former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch in a conversation with Lev Parnas, an associate of his personal lawyer Rudy Guliani. He repeated the claim in a later appearance on the “straight news” program Special Report.

From the January 24, 2020 edition of Fox News' Bill Hemmer Reports:

JOHN ROBERTS (FOX NEWS CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT): I spoke to a source earlier today, Bill, who was familiar with the recording that was made by Igor Fruman. The source tells me that when you listen to that part of the conversation and the overall context, it is clear that the president was not really being serious about it -- I mean, even though Ambassador Yovanovitch was eventually removed.

And don't forget that dinner was in April of 2018. Yovanovitch stayed on as ambassador for almost 14 months after that, so it's pretty clear that if the president was giving some direction, it wasn't something that happened for more than a year after that. But it does sort of contradict the president's statements that he didn't know Lev Parnas, if he was actually having a dinner with him and just a few other people.

TALKING POINT: Trump was using traditional negotiating tactics in disbursing foreign aid

After the conclusion of Saturday’s argument in the Senate impeachment trial, Fox’s Neil Cavuto framed questions for Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) almost exclusively through the lens presented by the Trump defense team. Cavuto repeated talking points from the president’s lawyers that misrepresented Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s testimony and misleadingly compared Trump’s attempt to extract a personal favor from the Ukrainian president to the tactics he’s taken with other foreign aid packages -- an example that Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow also gave in the Senate.

From the January 25, 2020, edition of Fox News' America's News Headquarters

NEIL CAVUTO (FOX NEWS HOST): Are you worried, Senator, that the way certain testimony was presented by, you know, Congressman Schiff, it left out some very crucial details, like Ambassador Sondland and this notion of quid pro quo, that he assumed that was the case, but when pressed on that, couldn’t say so unequivocally, had nothing to back that up outside of a gut feeling, I believe that’s how he termed it at the time, an assumption, and that that wasn’t a fair presentation, it was tilted on the part of Mr. Schiff.

…

CAVUTO: Do you find the way that the Trump defense team tried to frame the president’s support for and backing of Ukraine, not only because of his long-term defense commitments, but contrasting that with President Obama’s -- as if to say you might argue quid pro quo, but this is a president who in the end gave Ukrainians the aid that they needed and had a history of being very vigilant in that regard, and that when it comes to holding off aid, which of course is a presidential right, he’s done it with other countries. South Korea comes to mind. What did you think about that?

TALKING POINT: The impeachment trial is boring and should be covered less on TV

Fox contributor Mollie Hemingway defended the network’s decision to not air much of the House impeachment managers’ case in the Senate, saying, “What do you do when someone just trivally puts forth forward an impeachment that doesn’t have much substance?” MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz and Hemingway also both agreed that the hearings were boring.

From the January 26, 2020, edition of Fox News' MediaBuzz

HOWARD KURTZ (HOST): So on Thursday, for example, we did a check. MSNBC ended up carrying nine hours of the proceedings, the whole day. CNN, just under eight hours. Fox, which has been airing more of its nighttime opinion shows, just under four and a half hours, and that’s drawn criticism. Is that shortchanging the hearings, even if people think the hearings are boring?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY (SENIOR EDITOR, THE FEDERALIST: You know, it’s hard because normally an impeachment would be such a serious and grave issue, and what do you do when someone just trivially puts forth an impeachment that doesn’t have much substance? Do you just have to be beholden to them hour after hour after hour?

…

KURTZ: I’m torn about this, Mo, because I want to say this is so vitally important that it should be covered -- every word should be carried on cable news. But at the same time, it is very repetitive, 24 hours of Democratic arguments, and I find myself taking breaks or lowering the volume, and I do this for a living.

TALKING POINT: The impeachment scandal is meaningless because Trump eventually provided military aid to Ukraine

On January 27, MacCallum did back-to-back interviews with former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA). She was much harder on Boxer than she was on Collins, pushing the same GOP talking point about military aid to Ukraine in her interview with Boxer that the Republican congressman later raised himself.

From the January 27, 2020, edition of Fox News' The Story with Martha MacCallum

MARTHA MACCALLUM (HOST): When you sort of drill down on it, it’s quite clear that in the end, they got what they needed -- in fact, they got more than they had ever gotten from a prior administration in terms of lethal aid that Ukraine now has against Russia. That’s the reality of the money that was given, the support that was given in the end, regardless of what all that back and forth was So what do you say to that?

Fox's straight news coverage of impeachment is just recycled GOP talking points

TALKING POINT: Impeachment is partisan and therefore illegitimate

TALKING POINT: Regular people don’t care about impeachment and Democrats only want “revenge”

TALKING POINT: There was no quid pro quo

TALKING POINT: Trump “was not really being serious” about firing former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch

TALKING POINT: Trump was using traditional negotiating tactics in disbursing foreign aid

TALKING POINT: The impeachment trial is boring and should be covered less on TV

TALKING POINT: The impeachment scandal is meaningless because Trump eventually provided military aid to Ukraine

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